This relates to electronic devices and more particularly to methods and systems for performing high speed wireless communication in a power efficient manner.
Portable electronic devices, such as wireless and cellular telephones, digital media players (e.g., music players and video players), and hybrid devices that combine telephone and media playing functionality are known. These devices are typically configured to provide communications to a user in one or more modes. For example, a laptop computer such as the MacBookPro may be configured to communicate wirelessly in accordance with both the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth standards. Wi-Fi communications are generally characterized as high speed communications that take a relatively large amount of power to maintain. Bluetooth communications are generally characterized as low speed, short range communications that take significantly less power to maintain than Wi-Fi.
One common characteristic of portable electronic devices is that, in the view of many users, they never have enough battery life. This is due to a variety of factors, including the simple fact that the devices are portable. Thus, it would be possible to extend the battery life of the devices by, for example, providing larger batteries, but that would invariably lead to devices that are too heavy, too expensive and too bulky. Therefore, it can be problematic if the method of wireless communications places too heavy a load on the limited amount of electrical power available to the portable devices.
In order to try and provide the appropriate level of speed versus power consumption, electrical devices such as laptops often are capable of using different methods of wireless communications depending on the need. One common use of Bluetooth wireless communications, for example, is communications between the laptop computer and a printer. Such communications do not require high speed access due to the nature of the data being transferred and the speed at which it is used by the receiving device. In addition, the physical distance between a laptop computer and a printer under such circumstances is typically small, making such communications well-suited for Bluetooth.
On the other hand, if the laptop user needs to access the internet, Bluetooth communications will likely leave the user disappointed, due in large part, to the relatively low limits on communication speed. For example, if the transfer of a single song takes five seconds using Wi-Fi (assuming that the 802.11g standard is used), the same transfer using Bluetooth at current maximum speed would take more than a minute and a half. Therefore, the laptop typically accesses the internet using a high speed wireless connection such as Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi connections have a greater range (i.e., the computer can be farther away from the router than would be required using the Bluetooth protocol) and operate at significantly higher speeds, but at the cost of greater power consumption.
One problem with this scenario, is that most laptops typically have the Wi-Fi hardware and software running constantly, even if the internet browser is not being used. For example, a user might open the laptop to edit a letter written in a word processing program. Most users are not aware that the Wi-Fi hardware and software are also activated and are constantly sending out and receiving messages from other Wi-Fi points of access, even though the user is not utilizing that connection. This leads to the stored battery power being drained at a substantially higher rate that would otherwise occur.
Accordingly, what is needed are methods and systems for providing intelligent wireless communications, in which the system selects the proper mode for wireless communications based on throughput and power consumption.